


Greying at the edges

by themegalosaurus



Series: SPN episode codas [20]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Episode: s12e11 Regarding Dean, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2019-09-06 17:44:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: Sort of a coda (more of an AU?) for 12x11, 'Regarding Dean'





	Greying at the edges

Sam hasn’t been blackout drunk for a couple of years, not since the night that he got Dean back from demonhood and put away nearly an entire bottle of Jack. That time he woke up face down in his pillows, fully clothed with his dislocated shoulder shooting violent bolts of pain down his spine. This time, he comes to with the sky wheeling white above him, his clothes damp and his knees muddy and twigs and leaves in his hair. He sits up, hauls himself to his feet and staggers forward a dozen yards or so to emerge onto a jogging track, a woman in bright lycra thudding past with headphones in her ears. His legs are bruised and aching and his mind is… fuck, so foggy, a great roiling cloud of nothingness, and he has to stop thinking about that right fucking now if he wants to stay calm. He runs his hands through his hair, dislodging a beetle and a shower of debris, tries to straighten up his clothes. He finds his phone in his pocket, the screen shattered and dead. Great. But the next woman down the track has a guy alongside her, a personal trainer maybe, so Sam steps forward hoping that he won’t intimidate them both away.

“Hey,” he says, hoarse. “Can I – I’m sorry. Can I borrow your phone?” 

“What the fuck, Sammy,” says Dean as he picks up, “what the fuck are you playing at? The library shut at eleven, you clown, I’ve been calling you the past eight hours.” 

“Sorry,” Sam says, suddenly shaky now he’s got his brother angry and reassuring at his ear. “I, uh. I blacked out, I think. I don’t.” 

“You _blacked out?”_ says Dean, incredulous. 

“Yeah, I, um,” Sam says, and the anxious feeling in his chest gets bigger, inflates until he’s not sure he can talk over the pressure in his throat. He looks down at his hands and they’re still – he hasn’t – there’s no blood on them, they’re clean, they are clean, he’s sure about that. His hands are clean and Dean was surprised, he didn’t, he doesn’t know anything about why Sam’s mind’s gone blank. There’s not. Sam didn’t. 

“SAM,” says Dean, his voice sounding tinny where Sam’s dropped his hand to his waist. He lifts it again, puts the phone to his mouth and speaks, forcing the sound from his throat with an effort of will. 

“Sorry,” he says. “Dean. I just.” His breath is coming shorter than he’d like, shallow so that he’s starting to feel kind of dizzy. 

“You okay?” says the girl whose phone he’s holding. Sam nods. “You look pale.” 

He’s fine, he’s fine although his vision is starting to grey, just a little at the edges, but if he could just catch a breath he’d be fine. 

“Hey,” says the girl, and her hand is at his elbow. She takes the phone out of his hand. “I think your friend is sick.” 

Sam hears the burr of Dean’s voice but not the sense of it, focuses on trying to keep himself upright as the girl instructs Dean on where they are. 

“Okay,” she says when she’s finished, “he’s on his way.” She looks around them. “There’s a bench just down the path, can you…?” 

“Yeah,” Sam says, “yeah of course,” but it’s a long way on unsteady feet before he’s there, his knees giving as he starts to sit so that he crumples ungainly onto the seat. 

The girl hovers. “Put your head between your knees,” she says. 

Mute and passive, Sam obeys her, hangs his head and looks upside-down at the blades of grass as they shift in the breeze. 

It’s not long before Dean gets there, jogging anxious into view. “You okay?” he says to Sam, ignoring the girl – Heather – and her friend completely. 

“Yeah,” says Sam, “I’m fine.” 

Dean doesn’t look convinced, glowering at Sam’s rescuers like they had something to do with it, but he puts a careful hand under Sam’s elbow, helping him stand. “On we go, sasquatch,” he says. 

Dean insists on taking Sam to get some breakfast, ordering a heaping plate of eggs and bacon that makes Sam’s stomach heave, though he pokes at it obediently for a few minutes just to keep Dean quiet. After a while, though, he can’t really justify pushing the pieces around his plate any more. He looks up and meets Dean’s eyes.

“So…” says Dean.

“Yeah.” 

“Were you drinking? Was that it? I mean –“ Dean looks the kind of uncomfortable that usually heralds a discussion of Feelings. “I know it was rough on you, the prison and the, uh. Is it – I don’t know if – I mean, if that brought up some issues for you, dude, you can, uh. I don’t know, man. I understand, I guess.” 

“No,” says Sam, “I don’t…” He tries again to think back to the night before. What does he remember? He and Dean, heading out to check out some… to check out a place. And then. Then nothing, an eraser scrubbed decisively over the evening, nothing at all after the slow fading out of detail around what must have been maybe three o’clock in the afternoon. “Did we go to the, uh… the man…” 

Dean blinks. A line forms between his eyebrows; concern. “We went to the victim’s office, Sammy. You remember.” 

“Yeah,” says Sam. “I, uh… he was…” 

“He was an accountant, Sam, jeez,” Dean says. “We didn’t find that out last night, that was like… what, two days ago?” 

“Yes,” says Sam, “yes, okay, I remember now,” and he does, he’s pretty sure, the details of it swimming slowly to the surface of his clouded mind. “OK so we went to his office and then…” 

“You were gonna go to the library, Sam.” 

“Yeah,” says Sam. He scrubs a hand down over his face. “I have no idea if I did.” 

Dean chews his lip thoughtfully. “Let’s find out,” he says. 

“Have you got, uh,” says Sam as they head out to the car (it’s the black car, not the black car nearest in the parking lot–towards which his feet initially stray–but the big hunk of steel at the back). “The, um. You drink it for, um. For demons.” 

“Holy water?” says Dean. “Yeah, of course I got some. You think this was demons?” 

“No,” Sam says, “No, for me.” 

Two or three expressions flit over Dean’s face. Confusion, incredulity, understanding. He pulls a flask from his jacket, opens it, sniffs it, hands it to Sam. Sam knocks it back, breathes out in relief as it goes down smooth. As he sits down in the car, though, his gun dislodges at the back of his pants, and he pulls it out, looks at it. It feels like he shouldn’t… and he slides it open, tips the bullets out into his palm. He holds them for a second, unsure of the impulse behind the movement, until Dean looks over at him with some concern. His eyes flicker over the shells, one-two-three-four-five. 

“You shoot someone, Sammy?” Dean says, carefully. 

“What?” Sam says, and panic starts to clutch tight around his skull. “No, no I didn’t, I…” he swallows. “I don’t know.”

——-

By the time Rowena shows up Dean has Sam handcuffed to the bed.

“Kinky,” she says and Dean glares at her, holds back on what he wants to say because, goddammit, he needs her help right now. 

“Please,” says Sam, shaky and terrified, “I don’t think I should be here, I don’t know, I’m sorry, please let me go home.

“Did I kill somebody?” he says. 

“No,” says Dean, “no, don’t worry about it.” He picks up the book that Sam’s let fall onto the mattress, puts it back in his hand. Then he jerks his head, summons Rowena to the corner. “He only killed a witch,” he says, low. “Not, you know.“

“Oohh,” Rowena says. “Only a witch. Not _people_.” 

“I can’t remember,” Sam says again, calling out fretful. “What did I do?”


End file.
